


Hiraeth

by robocryptid



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Humor, Friends to Lovers, Geographical Inaccuracies, M/M, McHanzo Reverse Bang 2018, Pining, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-07-02 18:08:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15801861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robocryptid/pseuds/robocryptid
Summary: After discovering that the mercenary Reaper is his old commander and mentor, Jesse takes some time to get his head on straight. Hanzo refuses to let him do it alone.Or: the author gives Jesse McCree the kind of feelgood, big emotions, rite-of-passage road trip usually imagined for American teenagers, except this time it's for two grown-ass vigilante murder dudes.Written for the McHanzo Reverse Big Bang 2018.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. First of all, I want to send all kinds of love and gratitude to [illicit](https://phodiax.tumblr.com), who not only came up with one _hell_ of a prompt, but who was so supportive of the various ideas I threw at them and the little changes I made along the way. They were lovely to work with! Additionally, the main concept for the fic and most of its best moments were their ideas, so I want to credit them with _all_ the inspiration here. Check out their art [here](https://illicitrez.tumblr.com/post/177412305884/title-hiraeth-rating-teen-and-up-audiences-tags), or you can wait until the moments arise in the fic, where they'll be linked. Either way, please send them all your love! They're also responsible for the title of the fic: _hiraeth_ means "homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, or for a home which may have never been".
> 
> 2\. I also want to thank Dee and the mods over at the Reverse Big Bang challenge for the opportunity, for their hard work, and for an overall awesome event. This was one of my favorite things to write to date, and it wouldn't be possible without them.
> 
> 3\. Big thanks to [YourAverageJoke](https://archiveofourown.org/users/youraveragejoke/works) for betaing and hand-holding, to [PersonalSpin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PersonalSpin/pseuds/PersonalSpin/works) for some extra beta reading, and to [mataglap](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mataglap/works) for cheerleading.
> 
> 4\. illicit also created a rad bluegrass/folk/roadtrippy playlist when they developed the original concept, which you can find [here on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/user/illicitresonance/playlist/5zLa6n9K0nhsTTa1gp8F2b).
> 
> 5\. Finally, about the fic itself: I took some liberties with the geography, which I excuse in-fic-universe with a cocktail of post-Omnic Crisis hellscape, future environmental devastation, and the general time-wasting nonsense one gets up to on road trips. So, you know, if you spot the inaccuracies, I hope you'll forgive me and participate in the hand-waving of it all. But hey, most of those weird roadside attractions are very much real world things, and that sure is _something_!

Jesse contemplated the depths of his mug. The coffee tasted thick and burnt; a sheen like an oil slick floated across the top. It was the kind of coffee Jesse had found in a hundred cheap diners scattered across the States, the kind of coffee that made a man wonder if there weren’t truly a little motor oil mixed in. It reminded him of the home he’d grown up in, of sitting on cracked plastic booths waiting for his mamá’s shift to end.

His waitress interrupted his reminiscing to top off his mug, and he tried to tip his hat at her before he remembered he’d left it in the truck. “Thank you, ma’am,” he mumbled, and she gave him the wan smile of a worker whose mind had already clocked out. Jesse’s gaze flicked to the door, took in the newcomer as he had every other this afternoon. He let out a long breath. “Think I could get another for my friend over there?”

Hanzo’s face mimicked a storm cloud as he settled into the booth, the worn bench creaking under him as if it shared his disapproval. Jesse wondered if he was supposed to feel nervous or embarrassed, but he instead got stuck with the sense that this had been inevitable. Overwatch wasn’t going to let him take a vacation, not now, not with another Crisis looming on the horizon. The only real surprise was that it was Hanzo they’d sent to fetch him. If you’d asked Jesse where Hanzo ranked in the listing of those most likely to hunt Jesse down and bring him home, he wouldn’t even place in the top five.

Hanzo didn’t deign to speak to him, only stared him down like he was mentally composing a lecture. The silence finally broke when the waitress brought Hanzo’s coffee and he was forced to thank her.

“What’s a guy like you doin’ in a place like this?” Jesse tried.

Hanzo’s lip twitched, but he seemed determined to remain unimpressed. “You know why I’m here.”

“You gonna cause a scene?”

“That depends entirely on you,” Hanzo said. He took a sip of the coffee then pulled a face. Jesse did his best not to laugh. Too polite to say anything about it where the wait staff could hear, Hanzo quietly pushed the mug toward the center of the table, put some distance between himself and the offending beverage.

Jesse took a noisy sip of his own, mostly to prove he could. Hanzo looked slightly more disgusted than he had when he’d tasted it himself, and Jesse couldn’t help but grin. “Why you?” he asked.

Hanzo ran a finger over the laminated menu and grimaced when he inevitably found something sticky. Jesse hid another smile behind his mug. “I once made my living finding people who did not wish to be found,” Hanzo answered quietly, a little tensely like he thought he shouldn’t have to explain himself at all. He breathed in sharp through his nose, glanced at Jesse quickly before he looked down again. “And they aren’t the same, but perhaps I understand what you’re going through. To some small degree, anyway.”

Jesse grunted at that and tried his best to mull it over. The association stung a little, but Hanzo probably wasn’t entirely wrong. He wondered, not for the first time, what it must have been like for Hanzo to discover Genji was still alive. Had been alive for a decade, lived near a third of his lifetime without Hanzo in it. Maybe Hanzo did understand.

“Then you oughta understand the rest,” Jesse told him, jaw setting stubbornly. “You sure took your sweet time gettin’ back to work. Maybe I get time too.”

He expected an argument, might have even been spoiling for one. But Hanzo only nodded at him then looked back to the menu. “Is the food better than the coffee?” he asked.

 

* * *

 

Hanzo really didn’t try to drag him back to Overwatch, not that day or any of the ones that followed. Jesse abandoned the piece of shit truck he’d secured in favor of Hanzo’s discreet rental sedan — a plain silver thing the likes of which a few million Americans drove — and Hanzo let Jesse do most of the driving. He seemed to prefer to complain about Jesse’s taste in music while he basked in the sunshine filtering through the window.

Somewhere on the drive, it came out that Jesse had never had a real vacation. He’d grown up too poor, and between Deadlock, Blackwatch, and a few years on the run, there hadn’t ever been much room to simply take in the sights. Hanzo only nodded thoughtfully and suggested that he was more than capable of watching Jesse’s back for him if the need arose.

They drove in silence for a time, stopped once at a convenience store on the way so that Jesse could get his own pair of sunglasses. Hanzo picked up a real paper map on the way out and sat in the passenger seat comparing the old thing to the one on his phone. It seemed the official map had not been updated in some time, left out all the remnants of the Crisis. After some good-natured bickering over where to head next, Jesse drove west.

They had to skirt around the old route a few times, and Jesse watched Hanzo out of the corner of his eye. Hanzo stared out at the wastes left over from a battle long past, scars riddling the land around them.

“Nothin’ like this in Japan, I bet,” Jesse said.

Hanzo hummed to himself and adjusted the sunglasses higher up his nose. “No,” he answered. “We met the omnics at sea.”

Jesse hummed too, then he cranked up the sound in the car stereo and lit a smoke. Hanzo didn't complain, but he did crack his window.

They didn’t discuss much. Jesse had always liked that about Hanzo, at least after he had gotten over the history with Genji. Hanzo knew how to respect a good brood, and he seemed content to let Jesse do so now, although Jesse still wondered if they were going to have to discuss some kind of timeline, some answer for when he might return to Overwatch. The thought loomed, but Hanzo never broached the subject. He tapped at his phone and pulled out cigarettes of his own, lit one and blew it out the cracked window into the hot, dry air.

Jesse had to wind his way toward his goal, couldn’t follow the historic Route 66 like he had hoped, but the destination remained intact. He could tell by the smell. Past the scent of their smoke lurked the overpowering stench of paint baking in the hot sun. He watched out of the corner of his eye as Hanzo wrinkled his nose, but still Hanzo didn’t complain.

“You ever been to the States?” Jesse asked him.

“A few times, but not out here. Wherever ‘here’ is.” Hanzo said it with a smirk, and Jesse drove on, drumming his fingers against the steering wheel. He saw the moment it registered to Hanzo exactly where they were heading. “ _What_ is _that_?”

Jesse finally laughed as they pulled up to the site: a veritable stonehenge of old, rusted cars stuck nose-down in the dirt, most of them a century old by now, painted in caked on layers from tens of thousands of visitors over the decades. “It’s an American icon!” Jesse crowed as he brought the car to a stop.

“You are not serious,” Hanzo said.

“As a heart attack. Welcome to Cadillac Ranch.”

Hanzo made a face at the name, at the stench in the air, but he got out of the car when Jesse did, eyeing the whole installation with obvious—if grudging—awe. “Who does something like this?”

“Americans, I guess. It’s a piece of history. Been around longer’n either of us have.”

Hanzo stalked along the row of cars, giving wide berth to their fellow travelers. “Why?” he asked.

Jesse had no good answer for that, only a shrug. He pushed his own sunglasses up and trotted along next to Hanzo. “Hell if I know. Never got to see it though, and it wasn’t that far. So here we are!”

Hanzo snorted, but he gamely slowed to match Jesse’s pace. “So do we just stare at it?”

Jesse grinned at that. “Some people bring their own paint.”

“Hence the smell.” Hanzo wrinkled his nose again.

“Yeah, hence the smell. But it’s just somethin’ you look at. Maybe a monument to better days.”

“I sincerely doubt there were ‘better days’ if you had to make a monument out of junk cars.”

Jesse laughed but he wouldn’t argue the point. “You’re standin’ on American holy ground. Least you could do is try and appreciate it.”

[Hanzo snorted again, but he did do something unexpected then: he dug out his phone and took a selfie, beamed big and bright for the camera. Jesse laughed again, surprised more than anything else, but when Hanzo gestured for him to stand in front of the row of cars, he made sure to strike more than a few creative poses for him.](https://78.media.tumblr.com/98a9cd259e41b7a1945ab45d0810cfd3/tumblr_inline_pe2ow2DowW1redo24_1280.jpg)

“What’s this for, anyway?” he asked.

“It seemed important to you. I thought you would like to keep the memory.” Hanzo shrugged as if it were nothing at all, and Jesse felt something strange clench in his chest. “You left your own phone behind,” Hanzo chided, quieter now, before he glanced around at the other tourists. “And I promised _them_ I would let them know what I got up to when I found you.”

Jesse struck one last pose, fingers pointed like twin pistols at the camera. Then he said, “I heard that.” Hanzo raised an eyebrow. “I heard you say ‘when’, not ‘if’. Mighty confident, weren’t you?”

“I wasn’t wrong,” Hanzo said with another shrug. Jesse chuckled and shook his head, and together they walked the line of cars one last time. In person, it seemed less impressive than he had imagined. But Hanzo had a funny little smile on, lips twisted off to one side like he had an inside joke with himself, and Jesse found it hard to summon up much disappointment.

Back in the car, Jesse fanned himself in front of the blessedly cool air conditioning, and he politely pretended not to notice Hanzo doing the same. Hanzo seemed intent on trying to maintain some dignity in the face of it, but the tiny bead of sweat sliding down his cheek gave him away.

“Was this what you planned to do before I arrived?” Hanzo asked.

Jesse huffed, got too stuck on the question to properly laugh. “Not at all. I didn’t really _have_ a plan, if I’m bein’ honest. Just needed some time to myself.”

Hanzo looked thoughtful as he leaned in to let Jesse light his cigarette. Jesse wished he could see whatever Hanzo was hiding behind those dark aviators. “Where else would you go, if you were to make a list?”

This question caught him off guard too, left Jesse staring hard at him. He didn’t really know. He had never done something like this, traveled just to travel. He had always stayed on the road just to keep on the move, keep the law or Talon or anybody else off his back. Jesse looked at him for a few minutes, and Hanzo only looked back mildly, no input of his own, like he trusted Jesse to do most of the thinking and planning for this one.

After a moment, Jesse pulled out of the drive. “You ever been to the Grand Canyon?” he asked.

It turned out Hanzo hadn’t been to the Grand Canyon, but there were a few hundred miles of broken highway and post-war wastes between that and the Cadillac Ranch. In between, they eventually had to stop for rest at an old, rundown motel just off the highway. The whole place held nothing but vacancies, sparing Jesse the minor panic he’d considered when he thought he might have had to share a bed. The same room was more than enough stress.

The night passed uneventfully, though he did learn that Hanzo’s routine apparently consisted of more than just inspecting his weapons. He took up more time in the shower than Jesse had expected. If he’d been asked, he might have guessed that Hanzo was more the spartan type, prone to quick, stiff scrubs, not luxuriating in the bathroom for long periods of time. Hanzo also smelled a lot nicer than he anticipated; he clearly wasn’t relying on the cheap complementary soaps.

Jesse thanked whoever might be watching over him that the place had a room with double beds, then cursed under his breath when he discovered Hanzo took off most of his clothes to sleep, didn’t even have the decency to apologize or seem ashamed about it. Jesse reminded himself nudity hadn’t really ever bothered Genji either, and he passed it off as a family thing and did his best not to resent it.

In the morning, they ate at another greasy spoon—a phrase Jesse was more than a little delighted to explain to Hanzo—and Hanzo still didn’t ask whether or when Jesse planned to return. They didn’t talk about much important at all, really, except for the lecture Jesse gave when Hanzo dared to insult the Willie Nelson coming out of the jukebox. Hanzo suffered it all with a tiny, secretive smile, and he picked up the tab by way of apology.

On the way out, they swung by another convenience store, picked up water and snacks for the road. They swung by a liquor store too, picked up a reasonably non-shitty bourbon and a bottle of sake that Hanzo didn’t sneer at too aggressively. That wasn’t for the road, but Jesse figured it would come in handy later.

They drove out, west again and sometimes south, abandoning Route 66 again when it got too close to old Deadlock territory. They wound through roads and land pockmarked with the remains of war nobody’d gotten around to cleaning up. If he looked hard enough at some of the wreckage, he could almost picture it as if it were fresh, as if he could still see the smoke and flames and electrical pulses, not just dead heaps of metal. That kind of thought made him light another smoke and turn up the radio, maybe chatter at Hanzo just to distract himself.

Eventually, Hanzo did bring _it_ up in a roundabout way. Not quite as direct as he might usually be. He reached out to turn the radio down, and Jesse could see Hanzo glance his way. “When Genji... came back, I took several months to myself.”

Jesse pursed his lips and shoved a cigar between them just for something to do. He wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to talk about it, but it seemed rude to shut Hanzo down now, when Hanzo for once seemed ready to discuss his own shit. “Yeah? What did you do?”

“Not this,” Hanzo said with a smirk, then he lit a cigarette and held out the lighter for Jesse. “I traveled a little, but it wasn’t much. Ate some cake.”

Jesse snorted at that as he rolled down the window on his side. It probably meant they couldn’t return the rental without some kind of penalty, but he sincerely doubted Hanzo had ever planned to return it at all. “You stress eat?” he asked with a grin. “Don’t look like it.”

Hanzo laughed at that and smoothed a hand over his hair. Several loose strands fell back in his face as they always did, and Jesse tried not to let the sight of it distract him from the road. “Not stress. Pleasure.” Hanzo fiddled with his phone for a moment, and somehow Jesse thought that might be the end of the conversation, until Hanzo told him, “We were not allowed many small pleasures. It was nice to have.”

Jesse chewed on the end of the cigar, same as he chewed on the idea. He didn’t know how to ask, but it seemed like that’s what Hanzo was offering him now: small pleasures. Maybe it was why he didn’t put up more than a token complaint about the Cadillac Ranch. Might explain why he seemed willing to see the Grand Canyon. Jesse thought too about the expensive smell of him after his nearly hour-long shower, and he had to clear his throat. “Did it help?” Jesse finally asked.

Hanzo breathed out, a little cloud of smoke swept away out the window. “In some ways. It was a reprieve anyway.”

Jesse thought about it. Hanzo gave him the opening to talk about it if he wanted, but he didn’t push. It showed more tact than he’d have given Hanzo credit for before all this. Jesse didn’t think he really had it in him to talk yet though. He drummed his fingers on the wheel and shoved a hand through his own hair, before he snatched the hat off the dash and settled it on his head.

“You ever had beef jerky?” he finally asked, and Hanzo laughed.

 

* * *

 

Hanzo was surprisingly easy company. Not that Jesse’d expected him to be _bad_ company, exactly, but he didn’t expect him to take to the road so readily either, to ease into his spot in the passenger’s seat like he belonged there. They bickered occasionally over the music, but mostly Hanzo soaked up the sun like a cat, looked half asleep and tolerated Jesse’s jokes and his road food and his stories.

“Is it New Mexico or the United States that is obsessed with aliens?” Hanzo asked him after they passed their third roadside UFO museum.

“Little of both? Definitely New Mexico. It’s a shame we gotta skip Deadlock Gorge. I’d take you to the Cave of Mystery.”

“Cave of Mystery?” Hanzo asked. “Is this a euphemism?” Jesse couldn’t quite tell if the joke was intentional, but he laughed long and loud anyway, more flustered by it than he should have been.

The route Jesse chose took them farther south, and Hanzo’s bad jokes got worse. Somewhere just outside Roswell, Hanzo picked up a book to torment Jesse with.

“Knock knock,” Hanzo prompted in a dull monotone.

“Who’s there?” Jesse sighed to himself, but there was no talking Hanzo out of it or getting him to put down the stupid book. It filled the silence, took some of the pressure off Jesse to do it, but it made his fingers itch for another smoke even as he flicked the most recent out the window.

“Robin.”

“Robin, who?”

“Robin you. Now give me your money.” Hanzo’s face and voice never broke, even when Jesse groaned and slouched further into his seat, pulled his hat down in secondhand shame.

“You tryin’ to kill me with this?”

Hanzo hummed to himself, then he turned a page in his book, acting for all the world like he was actually interested in the contents. “You earned this. How many of your ‘jokes’ have I suffered?”

“Mine ain’t this bad. I’m offended by the association.”

Hanzo only grunted in reply, then he said, “Knock knock.”

Jesse groaned again in anticipation, but as he’d done for the last thirty miles, he went right along with it. “Who’s there?”

“Spell.”

“Spell, who?”

“W-H-O.”

Jesse scrubbed a hand over his face. “Next place we stop, I’m turnin’ myself in. You can have the bounty.”

Hanzo laughed, cool and light, and Jesse could still feel it reverberating between his ribs long after he fell silent.

 

* * *

 

They checked into the motel room reasonably early, and Jesse let Hanzo get the first shower again while he went to find them something to eat. Hanzo said he wanted something more substantial than convenience store hot dogs. Jesse couldn’t blame him at this point; it had been a full 24 hours since either of them had last eaten anything with any green on it.

So he found his way to a little hole in the wall restaurant that advertised it took to-go orders. It had to have been family-owned; the girl at the front door looked too young to be working otherwise. She gave him a perfunctory smile, the sort that said she hoped he got out of her hair quick, and she took down his order. All that was left was the waiting. He hoped Hanzo was fine with burritos. He hadn't actually thought to ask about those specifically, but he figured Hanzo wouldn't mind the fresh, real food kind.

He hung around on a bench by the entrance, trying not to take up too much space. The door swung open, let in a draft of incrementally cooler, dusty night air and a waft of a familiar scent with it. It smelled like cigarettes and leather and a cologne Jesse couldn’t place, but it made something buzz uncomfortably in the back of his head.

He didn’t know why he looked, why he thought it would matter, but the man standing in the doorway, pretty date on his arm—he looked like him. Jesse knew he was staring, knew he had to look away before someone noticed, but he couldn’t quite stop himself. The stranger smelled like him too, was just about the right age. He didn’t have the scars, had salt and pepper hair instead of jet black, but he had Gabe’s same dark skin, the strong jaw and nose, a goatee that came close enough to be eerie.

Jesse made himself look away, clenched his hand and dug the heel hard into his thigh. It wasn’t Gabe. The man wore a leather jacket and the same cologne, bore a passing resemblance, but he wasn’t really built the same, didn’t carry himself like he was dangerous or had any experience commanding dangerous people. Jesse told himself these things, and when he glanced back up, the man and his date were already being seated, well away from Jesse and none the wiser.

It didn’t stop the buzzing in his head or the strange sense that the floor was coming up to swallow him. It didn’t change the dread that sat like a stone in his stomach, the anger and adrenaline that rushed through him, the surge of grief that threatened to overtake him.

The hostess brought him his food in a plain brown bag stapled with his receipt, and Jesse could barely make eye contact, fingers shaking as he handed her a card. He made himself breathe, counted down the inhales and exhales, and the moment she handed the card back, he fled outright.

He took his food and drinks back to the motel, where he found Hanzo lounging on one of the beds with a tablet propped on his lap. Whatever was on his face, Hanzo didn’t say anything, didn’t try to interrupt him as he dropped the food and drinks on the tiny table and beelined for the bathroom.

In the shower, he finally let himself feel it. He turned the water hot as it would go and made himself breathe through it. He nearly choked on the steam as he sucked in huge, heaving breaths, but he couldn’t cry, not really. He still didn’t know _what_ to feel, how to quiet the insistent buzzing at the back of his head. So he scrubbed, and he counted his breaths, and he let himself soak in it until the water began to cool past the point of comfort.

At least he was no longer shaking, felt steadier on his feet. Hunger had finally replaced the weight in his stomach, which spoke to some sort of progress.

He left the bathroom without a word, grabbed clean, dry clothes and changed quickly into them. Hanzo politely kept on at his tablet, though he wasn’t real subtle about watching Jesse out of the corner of his eye. Whatever his intent, his whole body was tense and wary, like he expected Jesse to snap.

When Jesse had his clothes on again, he paused for a moment, unsure whether he wanted food, a drink, or a smoke. Maybe all of the above. Under his skin, it felt like what he really wanted was a good fight. Maybe Hanzo wouldn’t be opposed to visiting a bar tonight, one of the ones on the outskirts of town where the bikers and rougher sorts clearly hung out.

Hanzo cleared his throat. “Can you eat in the car?”

“Been doin’ that for a few days now,” Jesse said irritably.

Hanzo rolled his eyes. “Come on then.”

Whatever he was up to, it would get them out of this stifling room. For once, Hanzo drove, while Jesse ate his now lukewarm burrito in mulish silence. At first it seemed he’d had the same idea as Jesse, heading out of town toward the biker bars, but he kept on driving, out into the desert. Jesse’s eyes burned with smoke and everything trapped inside, but he didn’t argue, and he wasn’t real keen on examining why that might be just yet.

Eventually, Hanzo pulled off the road proper and out a little ways, right out into the desert. There was no telling where they were — “middle of nowhere” seemed to cover it pretty well — but Hanzo’d driven with the confidence of a man who knew where he was going.

Hanzo stopped the car and turned the ignition off. It should have been dark, but the moon was big and the sky was clear; a little light pollution tarnished the horizon but otherwise didn’t disrupt much, and his night vision came on quickly. Hanzo looked at Jesse, then he grabbed both bottles out of the back seat and said only, “Come on.”

“The hell are we doin’ out here?” Jesse asked.

“I have never seen this desert, and you need... something that isn’t our motel room, at least,” Hanzo said, thrusting the bourbon bottle at him roughly. Jesse leaned on the hood of the car and opened the bottle, took a swig right out of it, then shoved it between his knees to fish out and light a cigar. Hanzo sat next to him, toes kicking up dust as he settled his weight onto the hood of the car. “This sake is awful, by the way,” he said, and Jesse snorted.

“You’re lucky we found sake at all out here in Bumfuck, New Mexico.”

Hanzo hummed to himself, then lit a cigarette and simply watched him. He didn’t bother to try to hide it, just took Jesse in slowly, dark eyes flicking over his features. Jesse did his best to ignore it, only took another determined swig of his drink, a long pull that made his eyes water. The bourbon really wasn’t great either. He let out a low cough, and Hanzo smirked, just a little quirk of his mouth.

They went on in silence for a bit, smoked and drank, Hanzo clearly watching him carefully. Finally, Hanzo spoke. “After I found out Genji was alive, this is what I did.”

Jesse worked hard not to bristle at that. “Thought you ate cake.”

“That too. But I did this first.” Hanzo shifted his weight briefly, his sole concession to what had to be an uncomfortable subject.

Something about it rubbed him wrong. “You tryin’ to compare notes?” he sneered. “You think this is anything like realizin’ the brother you tried to kill ain’t dead?”

Hanzo only shrugged, but his next words came more slowly, had a determined bite to them, just underneath the surface. “I did this, and I did it alone. You should not have to. _That_ is what I was trying to say.” It sucked some of the wind out of Jesse’s sails, though the agitation remained. “If you’re looking for a fight, I suppose I can help that way instead.” Hanzo smirked again, more obvious this time. “Though I’m not sure you’ll enjoy the drive tomorrow after I kick your ass.”

Jesse barked out a loud laugh, caught himself by surprise with it. He could still feel it thrumming under his skin, part of him spoiling for a fight, but Hanzo had been nothing but good to him the whole trip. Surprisingly good to him, steadier than expected and with more patience and empathy than Jesse’d given him credit for. He didn’t deserve any of Jesse’s meanness just now.

“Still ain’t the same,” he said stubbornly, but it was more tired than anything else this time. Hanzo only grunted, didn't bother to push. “But I don’t wanna talk about me right now.”

“It may do you some good,” Hanzo said more slowly. He sounded almost comically lost. It made Jesse wonder how many times in Hanzo’s life he had really been the one to try to console somebody. Probably not often. He wasn’t especially good at it, but Jesse didn’t think he much wanted someone soft and kind and a good listener right now anyway. He would’ve stuck around base if that’s what he was after, gotten it from Angie or ’Reeha, maybe even Lena.

“No,” he insisted. “How ’bout you tell me about how you handled it instead.”

Hanzo stared at him, eyes a glittering black in the moonlight, face hard to read. Then he turned away, looked out over the desert and took a long swallow of his sake. Jesse did his best not to watch the way Hanzo's throat moved with it.

“You know how it starts. He came to me. He— I didn’t even know it was him right away. I didn’t believe him, but once I did, I was ready to die.” Hanzo shifted his weight again, stared at the dirt at his feet. “I thought he would do it. When he did not, I believed it must have been a punishment. Crueler than ending it, to force me to relive everything I had done.” Jesse watched him take a long breath, suck down a lungful of smoke before he stubbed out the cigarette, crumpled the butt of it in his hand. “And then he left me. That was cruel too, I thought. I still think it was, although it may have been necessary. So I— I ran. I ran from the shrine, I gathered my things, and I ran from the whole city. I went out into the woods, and I drank.”

Hanzo laughed, bitter and dry, then he looked at Jesse again. “I got blindingly, staggeringly drunk. If any of my clan had followed, I would have been an easy target. I spent the night in the woods, and I would have done the same again the next day if I had not run out of alcohol.” He looked at his hands, shook the bottle he held with another rueful little laugh. “I bought more, and I drank too much for too long. I wallowed in it until I ran into an old associate.”

“Associate?” Jesse asked, smirking to himself.

“She used to set me up with jobs,” Hanzo said with a shrug. Then he smiled, teeth white against the moonlight, and Jesse felt the strangest pang at the sight of it. It felt, horrifyingly, like jealousy. Like a question mark: did Hanzo ever smile like that thinking of him? “She... _berated_ me, told me I looked worse than she had ever seen me, and insisted that I clean myself up before I take on another job. I couldn’t tell her about Genji, but I suppose I was in a good enough place to heed the advice. She wanted me to take care of myself, even if it was only to keep up the work.” He shrugged then, glanced at Jesse again. “So I did. If only to continue my mission. I obviously did not quit drinking,” he said with another of those dry laughs, “but I certainly did less of it. And yes, then I ate cake. I went to a festival. I cut my hair and bought new clothing and pierced my nose and... I did things that I had never done before, just to do them. I let myself indulge for once. I realized I could do something more than the job.”

“That’s it, then?” Jesse scowled out over the desert, took another big swig of his drink. “Same thing you’re tryin’ to make me do here, isn’t it?”

“Not the same,” Hanzo said, and when Jesse looked at him again he looked right back, the harsh lines of his face softer now. “I told you. I did most of it alone. You do not have to.”

Jesse stared at him, and he felt something rattle around inside, something that made it too hard to breathe. “I appreciate what you’re tryin’ to do, Hanzo, but I—” He stopped himself there, caught up by the way Hanzo’s face started to close off again. It seemed to matter to him, to tell Jesse these things, to offer to help him. Jesse swallowed, and he started again. “Gabe wasn’t my brother. We didn’t always get along.” He stopped again, grunted to himself. It was more difficult to find the words than it had any reason to be. “It ain’t the same. It ain’t. But sometimes I feel like—” he breathed in sharply, jaw aching at the cost of the words “—like if I’d’a just stuck around long enough, or been willin’ to look harder at what he was becoming, or—” His breath hitched, cutting him off again, and the words got stuck on the lump in his throat.

Hanzo only watched, his drink forgotten and his eyes wide, huge and dark and _beautiful_ in the moonlight, and Jesse thought the alcohol might be hitting him harder than he’d realized. “It ain’t the same. Your brother came back to you,” Jesse said, hoarser now. He thought he might be choking on it. “I lost Gabe twice. First to Geneva, then to Reaper.”

Jesse didn’t really register what was happening at first, not until Hanzo moved closer to him, looking surprised and more than a little concerned. It started slow, tracks of tears running through his beard while he tried to scrub them off with his hand, but once it began, it became impossible to stop. Jesse couldn’t have said how long it lasted, either the tears or the silence, but Hanzo only sat beside him steady as a rock, without a word or the barest hint of judgment. The weight of a heavy hand on Jesse’s shoulder held him in place, even as the momentum of it built and Jesse shook with it.

He hadn’t let himself grieve like this yet. He had run from it, same as he’d run from Overwatch, and now it had to happen with a witness, with Hanzo, of all people, looking on. Jesse cried until his cheeks and eyes felt raw from rubbing them, until his throat felt raw too.

When he thought it might be over, or close enough, he let out a long, ragged breath and risked a glance at Hanzo, who only looked back at him mildly. Jesse cleared his throat and swept his palm through his beard again, wicking away as much wetness as he could. “Thank you,” he said quietly.

Hanzo gave him a smile, almost cautious about it. “I did very little,” he answered, uncharacteristically modest, as if he hadn’t single-handedly dragged Jesse’s stubborn ass through the worst part of grieving. Hanzo stared at his own hand on Jesse’s shoulder, fingers curling against the sleeve, and his other hand lifted awkwardly like he didn’t quite know what to do with it. “Do you want…” He huffed quietly and trailed off, plainly uncomfortable now.

It took Jesse a moment to figure out what exactly Hanzo was trying to offer, his arm still moving a little vaguely, maybe even helplessly. Any other time, it would have been funny to watch. As it was though, Jesse was a little too touched by it. “Yeah,” he said. “Come here.” Jesse slid an arm around his waist and pulled him closer. Hanzo’s arm curled around him too, a comforting weight across his back. He hunched in and pressed his face against Hanzo’s shoulder then into the crook of his neck with a low, strangled sound.

There was something indulgent about it, like maybe he should feel a little guilty, like maybe he was taking advantage of the alcohol and Hanzo’s sympathy. But Hanzo’s hand slid voluntarily from his shoulder into his hair, fingers soft enough that Jesse’s scalp tingled. He pressed a cheek to the side of Jesse’s head, and it was enough to banish any of the guilt.

For someone who was so hesitant to begin, Hanzo gave a damn good hug. It had been a long time since Jesse’d had anybody to hold him, and a part of him felt guilty again that he could so easily imagine it as more than consolation. But Hanzo had tracked him down, kept him company and bought him time, offered comfort and unexpected kindness when he needed it, threatened to kick Jesse’s ass when he needed that too, and he had his hand in Jesse’s hair, soft and sweet and _intimate_ in a way that was hard to think of as purely platonic. It loosened something in Jesse’s chest, made it easier to breathe again. When he finally pulled back, he might have imagined that Hanzo’s hand lingered in his hair, but he didn’t think so.

He caught Hanzo’s gaze, eyes soft and a little unfocused, and Jesse could hear his own heartbeat in his ears, urging him to lean back in and kiss him. He thought Hanzo might let him, might even kiss him back. Looking at Hanzo, who held Jesse’s gaze and maybe held his own breath, Jesse was sure he hadn’t only imagined it.

Jesse pulled away and cleared his throat. If it really was all in his head, he wasn’t eager to finish off their road trip with that hanging over them. And, he reasoned, if it was actually there, he’d get another chance, maybe one where they weren’t a little tipsy and Hanzo wouldn’t have to kiss a mouth still salty from tears.

“Thanks,” he said again, and that seemed to shake Hanzo free of whatever had frozen him. Jesse cleared his throat again. “So you said the next step was gettin’ shitfaced, right?”

Hanzo laughed at that and raised his bottle of sake again. “Something like that,” he said.

Jesse grabbed his bourbon and clinked the bottles together. “Kanpai.”

“Kanpai,” Hanzo echoed, a funny smile on his face, then he turned away and tipped the bottle up.

Perched on the hood of the dusty rental car, they drank and smoked and talked about nothing important at all. Jesse knocked his knee against Hanzo’s, and Hanzo only pressed back, gave another of his strange, secretive smiles.

They traded stories about life on their own. Hanzo’s decade as an assassin hadn’t been so far removed from Jesse’s own time hunting bounties. They tried their hand at stargazing, but it turned out neither of them knew shit about it beyond a handful of different names for the Big Dipper. Eventually, Hanzo fished out the book of knock-knock jokes from the glove compartment and settled back on the hood of the car; to anyone else, the weaving in his steps may not have been noticeable, but Jesse’d watched Hanzo’s usually purposeful walk enough times to see it.

“I _will_ light that thing on fire,” Jesse said, lighter held out threateningly, and Hanzo only held it away from him.

“And I will buy another. We are still not even.” Hanzo enunciated every word a little too deliberately.

“My jokes are _great_ , you’re jus’ mad you don’t have this quick wit.” Jesse, on the other hand, might have slurred some of it.

Hanzo laughed, the giddy kind that bubbled out when a person was especially drunk. “Knock knock,” he said.

“You don’t even have it open yet,” Jesse complained.

“Knock _knock_ ,” Hanzo said again, very insistently this time.

“ _No_.” Jesse pointed threateningly, but the effect might’ve been lost when he let out a noise somewhere between a hiccup and a giggle. “I’m gonna burn it, and then I’m gon’ scatter its ashes out here in the desert.”

“You’ll have to take it from me first,” Hanzo said with a grin, and Jesse did his best to glare at him.

Jesse took a long, final draw of his bourbon and wiped the back of his fist across his mouth. Then he set it down and lunged, and Hanzo let out a truly undignified squawk, and Jesse thought maybe trying to wrestle the book from him wasn’t a kind thing to do to the hood of the car. Not that it especially counted as wrestling so much as flailing, both their feet scuffling in the sand. Either way, it seemed the car would be fine, because Jesse ended up on his back in the dirt fast enough, Hanzo perched victoriously astride him with the book, intact if a little worse for the wear, held high above his head.

Hanzo laughed again, backlit by the moon and his hair a mess, and it felt like something was trying to fly out of Jesse’s chest, like he had something caught in his throat and it might have been Hanzo’s name.

If Hanzo noticed any of it, he didn’t give Jesse any hints, only said, for a third time, “Knock knock.”

“Who’s there?” Jesse asked, breathless and helpless to fight any part of this surreal moment.

Hanzo flung open the book and squinted, then another laugh bubbled out of him. “I can’t read in the dark.”

Jesse groaned to himself, and Hanzo got back to his feet, wobbling a little on the way up. Hanzo left him lying in the dirt, but the ache behind Jesse’s ribs lingered, right alongside the memory of Hanzo smiling down at him in the moonlight.


	2. Chapter 2

Jesse woke to the kind of headache that made a person regret every choice he’d ever made. His neck hurt, his back hurt, his _legs_ hurt—and that was a new one, at least as far as hangover pains went—and he had a taste in his mouth he could only think to describe in the same language he’d use for a horror film. At least now, unmoving, he didn’t feel too much nausea; it seemed like it might be a lone bright point for the rest of the day.

It was too hot here, and the sun bore down right into his eyes. He groaned and shifted, more than a little alarmed when his pillow moved under him and echoed his groan. _Hanzo_ , he realized, distantly worried by how long it took him to figure out.

[They were wedged together in the backseat of the car, Hanzo half upright and Jesse curled up tight on the seat, face jammed against Hanzo’s chest. At least it explained the cramping in his legs and the crick in his neck.](https://78.media.tumblr.com/025243e1943bdb9ff8c33a3199128d5d/tumblr_pe2pn79kHV1xrtxv4o1_1280.jpg) Given the state of his head, it had probably been the smarter choice; neither of them could possibly have ended the night sober enough to drive. How they’d decided snuggling in the backseat was preferable to tipping the separate front seats back was a question Jesse didn’t have the memory to answer, but neither did he have much interest in looking this gift horse in the mouth.

Between shared body heat in the confined space, too many clothes, and the desert sun glaring down on them, it was far too hot to stay, no matter how much Jesse would have liked to. He gave himself a final moment to appreciate Hanzo’s arms looped heavy across his shoulders, then he began carefully working his way free. Every step of the process was slow and excruciating, his head throbbing and stiff muscles complaining with each movement, but he managed to untangle himself and keep the jostling to a minimum. Hanzo barely reacted except to let out a quiet murmur that Jesse found cute and liked to imagine sounded disappointed.

Once he’d freed himself, Jesse let himself indulge in a good long look. Hanzo’s hair was down, tangled and dirty and with strands in his face, and his head lolled precariously to the side as he adjusted to Jesse’s absence. He looked terrible, and Jesse’s heart clamored in his chest anyway.

Jesse managed to get out of the car without waking him. He dug around in the trunk for the car’s first aid kit, and he chased a small fistful of ibuprofen with a full, too-warm bottle of water. None of it made his stomach try to rebel, so he dug his sunglasses out of the glove box and drove them back into town. He figured the half-empty motel wouldn’t be too upset if they rented another day just to nap off the worst of the hangover.

Hanzo didn’t seem too upset with the plan either. He grumbled wordlessly from the car to the room, then dropped facedown onto a bed. Jesse didn’t have it in him to point out he’d gone to the wrong one; he didn’t think he’d get a response anyway, at least not a polite one. So he let it go, left the pills and a bottle of water on the nightstand for him and crawled into the other bed. It smelled, unfairly, like Hanzo’s shampoo, some scent Jesse associated with rain and fresh green life in springtime and, increasingly, with Hanzo himself.

After the cramped car, the distance between the two beds felt too big, a gap too wide to bridge. Jesse remembered Hanzo’s fingers in his hair and reminded himself it couldn’t have been a one-time deal; less successfully, he reminded himself he didn’t want it if it were just a one-time deal. He matched his breaths to the shallow rise and fall of Hanzo’s back, inhaling the scent of new growth until it coaxed him to sleep.

 

* * *

 

Waking the second time went a lot smoother, at least as far as the various aches and pains went. He moaned and stretched, felt more joints creak and pop than were probably entirely healthy, but the headache was long gone.

“Finally,” Hanzo said quietly, somewhere off to Jesse’s left. “If you drooled on my pillow, I’m going to buy another joke book.”

Jesse pushed himself up onto his elbows and scrubbed a hand over his mouth. “I’m sure we can get you a new pillow.” He craned his neck looking for a clock and instead caught sight of Hanzo sitting damp-haired on the other bed. “Time is it?”

“High noon,” Hanzo said with a smirk, tilting his tablet to show that he wasn’t entirely joking.

Jesse snorted and forced himself to sit up, dehydrated muscles still protesting. “Been years since I slept that late,” he muttered, then he laughed dryly. “Outside the medbay, anyway.”

Hanzo smiled at that, the same one he’d worn for half this trip, like he had some joke only for himself. “I need food, but you need a shower first.”

Jesse thought about making a fuss about it, but he didn’t have any room to argue the point. He could smell stale smoke and bourbon and figured, with a twist of his mouth, it was probably all him. “You use up all the hot water again?” he asked, but he didn’t stick around to hear more than an offended splutter from Hanzo.

The shower felt good enough that it was easy to forgive that he had to duck to get under the showerhead properly, or that there was barely enough room to do more than turn in a tight circle. It felt as luxurious as a spa day to rinse off the sleep and the remnants of a night of drinking and—he remembered with a blush—wallowing in the dirt, and he may have spent longer than was recommended on brushing his teeth just to keep the blessedly clean feeling going. In the bathroom, he could tell himself that was all it was, but out in the room, where changing clothes suddenly turned from a neutral task to something that felt dangerous, he had to admit he might’ve been dragging his feet a little.

Hanzo didn’t act any different, didn’t give any clues about whether he was gonna acknowledge any of the night before. Hell, for all they drank and all Jesse knew, Hanzo might not even remember half of it. Jesse tugged a t-shirt on with the back of his neck burning, and Hanzo only did what he’d done every other time: fiddle with his tablet and smile that funny smile.

The silence wasn’t unpleasant, really, but on Jesse’s end it started to strain. “You said you were hungry?” Jesse finally asked. Hanzo grunted an affirmative. “Let’s get some breakfast.”

They walked to the diner across the road, where Jesse sucked down mud-flavored coffee and a greasy platter of eggs and bacon. Hanzo poked at his toast and picked back up on some charming, if overall meaningless, point of conversation, and neither of them mentioned any of the things they’d almost done.

 

* * *

 

Before they traded New Mexico for Arizona, Jesse finally caved and took Hanzo to a UFO museum. By Jesse’s estimation, there were far better options than the one they found, but it didn’t stop Hanzo from being downright delighted by the whole experience. He thought he should’ve stopped closer to Roswell, but there was a particular charm to this one, run down and out of the way as it was. Its claim to fame was a framed photo of a light in the sky and a wild story about a mummified alien body that naturally no longer resided in the museum itself.

Their guide, a weedy man with wisps of blond hair—where there was hair at all—rattled off a story about his own alien encounter, vague and improbable as such stories always were, with just enough holes to deny altogether but no easy alternative explanation. “Have you ever seen an alien?” he asked when he was finished.

Hanzo smirked. “ _Technically_ , yes.” At Jesse’s baffled look, Hanzo added, “Big, gray, hairy.”

Jesse stared at him, then he snorted. “Don’t let Winston hear you say that.”

“He doesn’t need to know,” Hanzo said with a laugh. “I’m sure you’re more than capable of discretion,” he said pointedly. He eyed Jesse up and down, miming some kind of vague intimidation tactic, but it just made Jesse go warm all over.

Jesse let Hanzo take a selfie of the two of them beside a crumbling plastic statue of a standard gray alien, and they left with Hanzo sporting a brand new t-shirt, a cheap screen printed thing that would likely start flaking after two washes. It was the same shirt Jesse’d seen all his life, a flying saucer with “I want to believe” emblazoned below it. Hanzo, of course, had chosen one in a vicious, eye-searing green, probably because Jesse had flinched the moment he’d touched it. It stretched tight across his shoulders and biceps, and Jesse had to admit to himself then what a lost cause he really was if he could still admire Hanzo’s body in that godawful shirt.

Across the Arizona border, they swung north again and ended up in Holbrook, where Hanzo marveled at countless dinosaur statues. Jesse offered to take him to a museum, but Hanzo was strangely uninterested in any of the petrified wood or real fossils in the area, only wanted to stop at every single statue they saw. His favorite looked as if it had been made from papier-mâché, a truly goofy tyrannosaurus with half a woman’s body in its mouth. He made Jesse take his photo in front of it, then he promptly passed it on to Genji.

They had a few hours to kill before nightfall, so Jesse humored Hanzo, drove him around to see all the dinosaurs and take their photos. Some of the shops insisted on asking for money for the photo ops, but Hanzo gamely handed it over without question, endlessly charmed by the frankly goofy statues.

“They’re all so _bad_ ,” he told Jesse, hushed and grinning.

“I think that’s the point,” Jesse said, though it might have been a bit of a question too.

“Do not tell me this is another monument to better days.”

Jesse shrugged at that, then smiled wide as Hanzo backed away to take his picture under a comparatively small brontosaurus. “Maybe they are. They’ve been here more’n a century, anyway,” he said when Hanzo was finished with the photo.

“I see.” Hanzo stared thoughtfully at one of the dinosaurs and politely refrained from pointing out that its eyes weren’t entirely symmetrical, but a raised eyebrow and a glance back up told Jesse what he was looking at. “Truly ancient then. They deserve respect.” The corner of his mouth ticked up, and Jesse couldn’t tell who he was mocking this time, but he was sure as hell making fun of someone.

“See if I take you anywhere again,” Jesse grumbled good-naturedly.

They picked up dinner from another greasy spoon and checked into another motel, where Hanzo made faces at his limp salad and seemed only a _little_ judgy about Jesse eating waffles for supper. They turned in early and Jesse thought again about the separate beds and the way Hanzo smiled at all the stupid shit they’d gotten up to, and he found sleep hard to come by.

 

* * *

 

They left the motel while it was still dark, technically in the AM but with the moon still in the sky. This far out west, the land was mostly untouched by the Crisis, the roads more or less the same as they’d been for a century or more.

Hanzo seemed at first like he was gonna doze in the passenger seat as usual, but instead he complained, vigorously, about Jesse’s good road music. He was strangely grumpy, closer to the reserved, angry man he’d been for most of the time Jesse’d known him. It seemed he wasn’t in the mood for country or American folk music or any of Jesse’s usual choices. Jesse thought about turning the radio off to appease him, but his contrary streak got the better of him. He punched the scan button on the radio console until he heard the opening strains of a familiar tune, then he grinned to himself and turned the volume up high.

“What are you doing?” Hanzo asked, grouchy as hell.

Jesse laughed outright, refusing to let Hanzo’s mood ruin his. “Don’t tell me you’re gonna be a dick about this one too. I’m not switchin’. You can sing along or shut up.” Jesse prodded at the volume buttons, drowned out Hanzo’s quiet protests with the tick-tocking drumbeat and the synthesizer.

He wasn’t actually sure Hanzo knew the song. It was almost a hundred years old by now, and Jesse wasn’t enough of a music buff to know if it was ever big on the international scene. But Jesse could sing it with enough overwrought emotion for the both of them, and he did, as loud as he could, until Hanzo’s lips twitched in a losing battle with smiling.

By the time the song hit the first chorus, Jesse glanced over long enough to see Hanzo’s mouth moving, just barely. “You know it!” Jesse shouted.

Hanzo rolled his eyes. “ _Everyone_ knows this song. It’s a classic.”

Jesse bit down hard on his lip in a quick grin, then realized it wasn’t conducive to singing along. The music swelled, the woman’s raspy voice did too, and Hanzo stopped resisting or pretending not to enjoy himself just in time to sing loud enough for Jesse to hear: “The drum beats out of time.”

Together and both a little off key, they sang through the rest: “If you’re lost, you can look and you will find me, time after time,” giving it all the drama the song deserved all the way through the whispering outro. The next song wasn’t nearly as fun, but it still left Jesse grinning like a loon for a solid half hour.

 

* * *

 

The drive to the canyon eventually slowed as other tourists began to trickle onto the road with them. This early, there weren’t nearly as many folks on the road as there might have been, and even once they paid their entrance fee and drove in, the crowds remained sparse. Jesse figured there was something to be said for showing up while it was still dark.

Once on foot, they made their way to the nearest viewpoint. In the gray early light, it was nothing but black shapes against a thin, brilliant orange line on the horizon, but even so the breadth of it made Jesse’s head spin a little. Hanzo for once didn’t grumble or snark about any of it, just leaned against the railing and took it all in.

Even the sound of the other tourists felt distant in the pre-dawn stillness. Jesse tore his eyes from the shadows of the canyon to glance again at Hanzo, who only stared wide-eyed and wordless out over the edge. He thought briefly about what it might be like to watch the sun rise with his arms around Hanzo, to tuck Hanzo’s head under his chin and share warmth to fight the comparatively chilly morning air.

Instead he bumped their shoulders together and felt his heart leap when Hanzo shot him a sideways glance and his secretive smile. With the fingers of light slowly creeping over the horizon and the golden glint off puffy white clouds, Jesse thought that might be enough to sustain him.

Their knuckles bumped together as the sun peeked over the rim, and Jesse took a moment to be grateful he still had the one good hand. When the sun came fully into view, Hanzo let out a quiet gasp and clutched Jesse’s hand. It seemed all instinct, totally involuntary, but Jesse adjusted his hand and laced their fingers together, and Hanzo didn’t pull away.

Every part of it felt a little cheesy. He’d always been prone to the occasional romantic notion, prone to overdoing it from time to time, but even so, holding hands with his _crush_ while watching the sunrise at the Grand Canyon felt like something that should have been reserved for movies and bad novels, mostly the sort made for an audience half his age. It didn’t feel like the kind of thing he had any right to. But he’d built a whole life out of taking more than he’d earned, getting luckier than he deserved, and he thought, with a grin he couldn’t possibly tamp down, maybe this was no different.

Jesse couldn’t have said if the feelings clanging around inside him distracted from the view or were magnified by it, but the sunrise was as breathtaking as any story he’d ever heard about it. The canyon lit up ahead of them, humbling in its vastness. Alone, he might have felt small, overwhelmed by his own insignificance in the face of something so ancient and massive, but Hanzo’s hand gripped his tight and kept him tethered there.

His heart leapt in his chest, and he finally turned to look at Hanzo, who wasn’t even watching now that the sun had left the horizon. He stared instead at their interlocked fingers with that secretive smile of his, but he seemed to notice Jesse’s gaze, turned to look right back at him.

“I wasn’t sure—” Hanzo said, at the same time as Jesse tried to ask, “Why’d you really—”

“You first,” Hanzo said hurriedly.

Jesse laughed, suddenly all nerves again. “Why’d you really come after me?” Hanzo said nothing for a moment, but his cheeks flushed a particularly revealing shade of red. “Was it just the stuff you said before?”

Hanzo’s hand twitched and went loose against his, and Jesse only tightened his grip. It seemed to brace Hanzo, because he took a deep breath and looked Jesse dead in the eye. “I volunteered. Before anyone else could. For the reasons I gave you and—” Hanzo huffed and glanced back down at their hands. Jesse thought Hanzo might smile again, but his expression went far too serious, eyes wide and searching when they returned to Jesse’s face. “You’re a good teammate. You’ve been a good friend to my brother and to me.” Hanzo pulled his hand free, and the intensity on his face made Jesse allow it, made him turn more fully toward Hanzo. But Hanzo didn’t draw away, instead pressed closer, his hand briefly hesitating before it came to rest over Jesse’s pounding heart. “You are a good man. I didn’t want to lose you, and I didn’t want you to lose yourself.”

“Oh,” Jesse said, hoarse and dumbstruck. “You were gonna say somethin’ else?” Internally, he flinched, sure he should have said or done _something_ a little smoother than that, but Hanzo—wry, sarcastic, occasionally downright caustic Hanzo—had a way of disarming him with this kind of sincerity. It was especially potent now.

“I wasn’t sure, before, if it was the right time. If this was too much, with everything you’re going through.”

“Too much?” Jesse barked out a stunned laugh. “Do you have _any_ idea what I—?” Hanzo looked surprised, and Jesse laughed again, flustered and struggling to correct his course. “I don’t think it’s _enough_ now. In fact, I think I might die if you don’t kiss—”

Hanzo’s mouth was on his before he could finish the rest.

Hanzo kissed like a force of nature, and it was all Jesse could do to hold on, to brace himself against the railing with one hand and drag Hanzo closer with the other pressed tight to the small of his back. The kiss didn’t feel like the kind that was suitable in public, not with the way Hanzo pulled him in, lips parted and body strained with all the things he’d had to hold back before. Jesse curved into it too, twisting his hand into the fabric of Hanzo’s shirt just to stop it from shaking.

They hung like that, pushing and pulling at each other and mouths practically adhered. Then someone let out a wolf whistle, and Jesse had to break away on a laugh, short of breath and with heat creeping down his neck. Hanzo laughed with him, looked flushed and dazed, which Jesse found more than a little flattering and a good look on him to boot.

All the sounds his heartbeat had drowned out suddenly snapped back into focus. A baby cried nearby, and people talked and laughed in their own little pockets. Hanzo seemed to realize it too, because he pulled away, though he still smiled as he did it. With the renewed presence of mind to be embarrassed by just how public it had all been, Jesse let him go.

“Stay right there,” Hanzo said, then he shuffled a few steps back and sideways. Jesse shoved his hat harder on his head and let Hanzo take another of his photos, posed dutifully for several of them and hoped the blush had disappeared for at least one good one.

They traded places, and Hanzo wore the same kind of stupid smile Jesse felt on his own face, and Jesse figured it’d be alright if they both looked a little goofy in these. Then Hanzo wanted his selfies again, which Jesse found much more pleasant now that he could sling an arm around Hanzo without wondering if it was too much or too close or too revealing. He was reasonably sure he looked pretty stupid in those too, especially when Hanzo planted another kiss on him and the camera still went off.

“I don’t think I’ll send that one to Genji,” Hanzo said.

“Might be fun to torment him with it,” Jesse said, matching Hanzo’s grin. “’Sides, it’s nothin’ a few dozen tourists haven’t already seen.”

Hanzo’s only answer to that was to kiss him again and snap another picture. It came out blurry that time, but neither of them were especially bothered. An elderly woman volunteered to take a few pictures of them together, and they both posed again, beaming like idiots.

They briefly debated actually hiking the canyon, but Hanzo teased Jesse about his cowboy boots and they shrugged off the idea. “Maybe next time,” Jesse said offhand, and Hanzo sucked in an audible breath and smiled in a way that made Jesse’s whole chest seize up. They spent half a day fucking around at the South Rim instead, taking in the view and flirting — and it was obvious enough now it was what they’d been doing the whole trip, even if Jesse’d been a little too dim to see it before.

They got lunch before they headed out, and Jesse could barely taste it, distracted as he was by Hanzo’s smile and the way their feet bumped under the table. Every part of it felt light and foolish and like so much more than he’d earned, but with Hanzo right in front of him or at his side in the car, it was easy to push that last thought away.

By mutual consensus they ended up back on historic Route 66 with some vague notion of finishing what they’d started. In the car, Hanzo still smiled like he had a secret, only now Jesse thought he might have a better idea what it was; Hanzo only ever seemed to do it when it was just the two of them talking, and Jesse thought it might be a smile just for him.

A little ways into California, they finally decided to stop for an early dinner. They didn’t bother with any sightseeing this time, just ate quick and found another hotel. The events of the day didn’t fully set in until Jesse watched Hanzo negotiate with the clerk for their room, this time with only one bed.

Everything about it should have felt new and strange and awkward, but it never really did. It felt entirely natural to join Hanzo for his shower this time, to laugh and try to squeeze two bodies into the small space, to kiss Hanzo under the water and breathe in the smell of his soap and shampoo in the steam. It felt natural, too, to slide into the bed together, Hanzo’s weight on top of him as comforting as it was exciting, just as it felt natural, when they finished finally exploring each other, to stroke fingers through Hanzo’s damp hair and to trade old stories in hushed voices until they both fell asleep.

 

* * *

 

“Huh. So they’re just poles. With bottles attached,” Jesse said.

Hanzo smirked. “Was there something misleading about the ‘Bottle Tree Ranch’?” Then he adjusted his sunglasses. “I like it.”

“How in the hell have you made fun of half the shit we’ve seen on this trip, and this is the thing you finally like?” Jesse still followed him past the chainlink fence, into the middle of the forest of bottles. Inside were more of the bottle trees and dozens of rusted out random objects, from guns and ancient typewriters to a real, actual missile.

“It’s art,” Hanzo said with a shrug. Jesse scoffed, and Hanzo only laughed at him and pressed a hand over Jesse’s mouth. “Hush. Listen.” A light breeze rustled through the place, causing some of the pieces to creak and sway, and if he closed his eyes, the whistle of it past all the glass almost sounded like wind chimes somewhere off in the distance.

When he opened his eyes again, Hanzo was smiling. “I guess it’s pretty,” he muttered against Hanzo’s fingers.

Beyond the fence was another forest. Their brochure told them these were all built later, after the original artist died. Someone had worked hard to keep up his legacy of turning junk into this strange, surreal attraction. Hanzo’s insistence that it was art bore out in the brochure, but Jesse still wasn’t sure he got it, even if he could appreciate refusing to let any of this old junk languish in a landfill somewhere.

The place was free, another tribute to old Elmer’s legacy, but Hanzo left a generous donation, more than the two of them combined had spent on the whole trip, and Jesse had to laugh and tip his hat at the look on the owner’s wrinkled brown face. “Thank you,” the old man said, staring from Hanzo to Jesse like he wasn’t sure which of them was crazier.

“Thank _you_ ,” Hanzo answered, and he plucked two pieces of weathered glass from a rusted trough just for donors.

Hanzo hung onto the pieces for a while in the car, smiling at them and shaking them until they clinked gently in his hand. Jesse still didn’t get it, but he’d take him back there a hundred times if it was gonna make him smile like that, so he kept his inability to appreciate junk art to himself.

The drive through Los Angeles turned out to be a stressful mess, especially after so long on the open road. The press of heavy traffic and the noise of car horns made Jesse grit his teeth and think about digging his gun out. Hanzo lit one of Jesse’s cigars for him and handed it over with a brief smirk, and Jesse took the hint and did his best to stay calm. Eventually Hanzo’s hand came to rest on his knee, thumb tracing the seam of his jeans, and the tension grew harder to hold onto.

They made it out to Santa Monica by midday, and Hanzo made sure to get their pictures taken by the “End of the Trail” Route 66 sign. They were both a little disappointed to learn it was a replica, moved inland along with a new pier as the sea level rose, but they’d deviated from the route and hadn’t exactly started where it did either. It was easy enough to roll with, especially from the beach where they decided to spend the rest of their day.

Jesse stretched out on their new beach blanket and idly brushed sand from his brand new shorts. “I was thinkin’,” he started, and Hanzo perked up to look over at him, chin propped on his forearms. “This is the end of the line, ain’t it?”

“It doesn’t have to be,” Hanzo said, and he gave a funny, aborted shrug that didn’t quite work when he was lying on his stomach like that. “We could follow the coast.”

“You’re really not here to take me back, are you?”

Hanzo smiled at that, gentler than expected, and Jesse’s chest felt light again. “Not before you’re ready.”

Jesse grinned back at him. “Guess it’d be a shame to waste all this new beach gear. Wouldn’t mind stayin’ in one spot.” Hanzo hummed thoughtfully. Jesse reached out a hand toward him, and Hanzo reached right back, fingertips tickling over Jesse’s palm.

“If we call tomorrow, it will take them at least a few days to pick us up.” Hanzo linked their fingers together. “We have time,” he said.

“Yeah,” Jesse answered with a grin, and he settled back to soak up more of the sun. “We got all the time we need.”

A few minutes later, Jesse’s eyes shot open again, and he said, “Hey, Hanzo: knock knock.”

Hanzo snorted like he’d already heard the punchline. “Who’s there?”

“Ike.”

“Ike, who?”

Jesse punctuated the whole affair with a wiggle of his eyebrows. “Ike-an rock your world, darlin’.”

“What have I done?” Hanzo groaned. Jesse pulled his hand close and kissed his knuckles, and he couldn’t stop smiling for hours.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check out the official art post [here](https://illicitrez.tumblr.com/post/177412305884/title-hiraeth-rating-teen-and-up-audiences-tags)!

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed, please let me _and[the artist, illicit](https://phodiax.tumblr.com)_ know! They deserve so much love for their art and so much of the credit for a lot of the ideas you read!


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